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Monthly Archives: September 2010

I seem to be making the rounds of Tacoma’s grocery stores with today’s being the Safeway on Pearl and North 26th Street. Even though the weather had warmed into the mid-70s, the season and decoration says autumn. This isn’t the fanciest Safeway in town, that title is held by the one in the Proctor District, but it’s pretty darn nice.

Today’s new place of the day is Lincoln-Eldridge Park in Tacoma. Until today, I hadn’t realize that the park had partially been developed by the Workers Progress Administration (WPA) and that part of the original park had been given to the Tacoma School District for the construction of the Lincoln Bowl.

I get to use the Western Washington State Fair as my new place of the day for 9/26/2010 Dear daughter and I managed to get here on the last day of a three week run. It rained on us both coming and going, but not a drop of rain while we were there. We did all of our favorite fair things — went to the Hobby Hall, looked at the local art/crafts folks, saw the animals and ate too much. A good time was had by all!

Today’s new place of the day is Bethlehem Lutheran Church at 101 E 38th St., Tacoma, WA 98404. The church has been at this location since 1948. They have two services, Saturday night at 5 pm and Sunday morning at 10 am. I’ve not been to a service, but I did go here to vote a while back. If you look carefully at the photo, it even has today’s date on it.

Today’s new place of the day is Great Harvest Bread in the Green Firs Shopping, University Place. As soon as I walked in the door and smelled the wonderful bread aroma, I knew there was bread in my immediate future. I walked out with a loaf of delicious Cinnamon Chip and three cinnamon buns. I think I’ll come back on a Monday and try a loaf of the Cheddar Garlic. The other nearby Great Harvest locations are in Federal Way, Puyallup, Seattle and Bellevue. According to their web page Great Harvest’s mission is to “be loose and fun, bake phenomenal bread, run fast to help customers, create strong exciting bakeries, and give generously to others.” Can’t argue with that 🙂

Today we went out to dinner at The Peanut Sauce, but darned if it wasn’t my second check out. So, I made my family drive me over to Wapato HIlls Park (not to be confused with Wapato Park on the east side of I-5). Since I know nothing about this park, I went to the Metro Parks website to learn this:

Eighty prime acres in South Tacoma, Wapato Hills Park was saved from development through the efforts of community activists. Today, 66 acres are devoted to open space and 14 to a neighborhood park. Metro Parks developed four of those acres into a playfield that opened in fall 2002. The playfield is named in honor of Skip and Laura Vaughn, who spearheaded the drive to save the land and turn it into a park.

Today I stayed in the house all day with a rotten head cold. But I hate to skip my new place of the day. So I’m looking back to an old place and calling it good. This photo is of the Balinese Room in Galveston, Texas. The building had a colorful history of gambling and being a speakeasy. The website devoted to the building says ” Headliners (at the property) included Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Duke Ellington, Mel Torme, Jayne Mansfield and Gene Autry.” In September 2008, Hurricane Ike destroyed the building.